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I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

indiehackers.com

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Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#131

Post by weaksauce »

busterbenson wrote: post #121
blorenz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that you have 4220 members that are subscription holders. I'm supposing that you have more that are active users but not Member/Patron status. What's average sessions? Is there anything you can do with the AWS allocation (ie. AWS configurations or infra swapping)? From my vantage point of what I perceives as your Service model, I'm not readily seeing any component of it that would be CPU intensive, but I'm just…

I get about 30-40K unique sessions per month, so a little over 10% are paying users. We gave all accounts that signed up prior to going paid free lifetime accounts, and many of them still use the site... so it's a weird mix. There's definitely stuff I can do to make AWS cheaper. Starting with just remembering to pre-pay for my instances ahead of time. One of my least favorite things to do is to log into the AWS conso…

obviously i have no idea what your backend looks like but have you explored if you could get away with sending those writes to a job queue and batch the inserts for more performance? or even something like a plaintext file that gets created and put into a folder that gets read from by a background worker and then written to the db.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#132

Post by sexy_seedbox »

vbsteven wrote: post #96

One of the main takeaways is that it’s still running on a very old version of Rails and JQuery. Maybe not great from a security standpoint but it shows that you do not need a Kubernetes cluster and a big HA setup and a modern language/framework for a profitable project. Btw, the site does not load past the initial splash quote in Firefox on iOS with Tracking Protection enabled. Disabling tracking protection fully loa…

Yep, the end user doesn't really care what your FOTM tech stack is.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#133

Post by swiftcoder »

busterbenson wrote: post #114
blorenz wrote: post #11

I'm curious why with $20K MRR it will take a Kickstarter to create a mobile app.

The other responses were accurate. Part of it is to be able to afford a little extra help, part of it is to re-spark excitement in the project with people, and part of it is to buy a little extra time to work on it full-time since the sad truth is that without my other income we're not actually able to live in the Bay Area with a family of four even on this revenue. An alternative is to move somewhere cheaper, which…

That immediately jumped out at me. The bay area seems like a pretty unsustainable economy for even relatively successful small businesses like yours.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#134

Post by sdrothrock »

mrunkel wrote: post #128
thaumasiotes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the phenomenon you're referring to? > In modern Japanese, cardinal numbers are given the on readings except 4 and 7, which are called yon and nana respectively. Alternate readings are used in month names, day-of-month names, and fixed phrases. For instance, the decimal fraction 4.79 is always read yon-ten nana kyū, though April, July, and September are called shi-gatsu (4th month), shichi-gatsu (7th month), a…

No, I believe the GP is referring to the fact that in japanese when you ask for 'four beers' the word for 'four' is different than when you ask for 'four chairs.' I don't fully understand it, but that is what a native speaker told me.

English has some of these words too -- they're specific kinds of counters.

Paper is counted in "sheets" or "reams," for example. "I want a sheet of paper" is distinct from "I want a paper" -- outside of the context of a newspaper, the latter would be considered grammatically incorrect.

It's just that in Japanese, these are more or less standardized based on the kind of thing you're counting, so 個 for small, discrete objects, 匹 for small animals, 本 for long, thin things, 冊 for bound sheaves of paper, etc.

So as an example, an English interface could say something like "4 umbrellas", and the Japanese version could get away with something like "4 傘 [kasa, meaning 'umbrella']" if it's a list, but if it's in prose, you definitely need to be able to say "傘4本 [lit. umbrella 4-count-of-long-thin-object]" or something similar depending on the context.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#135

Post by tigershark »

mrunkel wrote: post #128
thaumasiotes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the phenomenon you're referring to? > In modern Japanese, cardinal numbers are given the on readings except 4 and 7, which are called yon and nana respectively. Alternate readings are used in month names, day-of-month names, and fixed phrases. For instance, the decimal fraction 4.79 is always read yon-ten nana kyū, though April, July, and September are called shi-gatsu (4th month), shichi-gatsu (7th month), a…

No, I believe the GP is referring to the fact that in japanese when you ask for 'four beers' the word for 'four' is different than when you ask for 'four chairs.' I don't fully understand it, but that is what a native speaker told me.

Kirin biru ippai, tonkatsu ramen hitotsu to ask for a beer or for a ramen for the little that I remember... Definitely there is nothing similar in English.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#136

Post by tigershark »

sdrothrock wrote: post #134
mrunkel wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I believe the GP is referring to the fact that in japanese when you ask for 'four beers' the word for 'four' is different than when you ask for 'four chairs.' I don't fully understand it, but that is what a native speaker told me.

English has some of these words too -- they're specific kinds of counters. Paper is counted in "sheets" or "reams," for example. "I want a sheet of paper" is distinct from "I want a paper" -- outside of the context of a newspaper, the latter would be considered grammatically incorrect. It's just that in Japanese, these are more or less standardized based on the kind of thing you're counting, so 個 for small, discrete…

Mmm... I don’t think that it’s the same concept as the sheet of paper. Ippai and hitotsu contain the number, in English you don’t say I want isheet or tsheet of paper to indicate that you want one or two sheets of paper and ipbeer or nibeer to ask for one or two beers.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#137

Post by pmoriarty »

beat wrote: post #68
oil25 wrote: post #8

Would like to read this, but I just get a blank page with Javascript disabled. Looks like I can't even archive the page - https://archive.fo/kLTbo . Looking at the page source code, it's completely unreadable - just a single line with a bunch of third party scripts and trackers. Disappointment over what the Web has become ensues.

I'm curious how you managed to post a comment about it on HN with Javascript disabled. Is it even possible to post here without using Javascript? (Maybe it is, I dunno.)

Yes, it is possible to post a comment (or submit an article, or do just about anything else) on HN without Javascript enabled. This reply is an example. I'm using emacs-w3m to post it, and emacs-w3m does not understand Javascript.

I virtually always use HN without Javascript. It works great.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#138

Post by ncheek »

beat wrote: post #68
oil25 wrote: post #8

Would like to read this, but I just get a blank page with Javascript disabled. Looks like I can't even archive the page - https://archive.fo/kLTbo . Looking at the page source code, it's completely unreadable - just a single line with a bunch of third party scripts and trackers. Disappointment over what the Web has become ensues.

I'm curious how you managed to post a comment about it on HN with Javascript disabled. Is it even possible to post here without using Javascript? (Maybe it is, I dunno.)

I use HN with Javascript disabled and it works just fine. I'm currently posting this comment with JS disabled so to answer your question, yes it is possible.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#139

Post by thaumasiotes »

sdrothrock wrote: post #134
mrunkel wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I believe the GP is referring to the fact that in japanese when you ask for 'four beers' the word for 'four' is different than when you ask for 'four chairs.' I don't fully understand it, but that is what a native speaker told me.

English has some of these words too -- they're specific kinds of counters. Paper is counted in "sheets" or "reams," for example. "I want a sheet of paper" is distinct from "I want a paper" -- outside of the context of a newspaper, the latter would be considered grammatically incorrect. It's just that in Japanese, these are more or less standardized based on the kind of thing you're counting, so 個 for small, discrete…

Upthread, the topic is set by yorwba's comment:

>>> Japanese doesn't just have different measure words, but also different number words depending on the thing being counted.

You're talking about the measure words, not the number words.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#140

Post by abootstrapper »

busterbenson wrote: post #99

I’m the creator of the site in question and am just seeing this thread. Happy to answer questions about motivations, costs, etc if you give me a minute to finish lunch and get back to my computer!

Honest question. Why $5 and not $10? Did you do any testing for the optimal price point?
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